“If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man, then, if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of the wēr: his guild-brethren a third part: for a third let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guild-brethren pay half: for half let him flee.... If a man kill a man thus circumstanced, if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the king, half to his guild-brethren.” (Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. i, pp. 79-81.) Again, in the same work, Leges Henrici Primi, vol. i, p. 596, the ideas of the kindred and the guild run together in the most intimate manner: “Si quis hominem occidat,—Si eum tunc cognatio sua deserat, et pro eo gildare nolit,” etc. In the Salic law, the members of a contubernium were invested with the same rights and obligations one towards the other (Rogge, Gerichtswesen der Germanen, ch. iii, p. 62). Compare Wilda, Deutsches Strafrecht, p. 389, and the valuable special treatise of the same author (Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter. Berlin, 1831), where the origin and progress of the guilds from the primitive times of German heathenism is unfolded. He shows that these associations have their basis in the earliest feelings and habits of the Teutonic race,—the family was, as it were, a natural guild,—the guild, a factitious family. Common religious sacrifices and festivals,—mutual defence and help, as well as mutual responsibility,—were the recognized bonds among the congildones: they were sororitates as well as fraternitates, comprehending both men and women (deren Genosser wie die Glieder einer Familie enge unter einander verbunden waren, p. 145). Wilda explains how this primitive social and religious phratry (sometimes this very expression fratria is used, see p. 109) passed into something like the more political tribe, or phylê (see pp. 43, 57, 60, 116, 126, 129, 344). The sworn commune, which spread so much throughout Europe in the beginning of the twelfth century, partakes both of the one and of the other,—conjuratio,—amicitia jurata (pp. 148, 169).
The members of an Albanian phara are all jointly bound to exact, and each severally exposed to suffer, the vengeance of blood, in the event of homicide committed upon, or by, any one of them (Boué, ut supra).
[94] See the valuable chapter of Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. vol. i, pp. 317, 350, 2d edit.
The Alberghi of Genoa in the Middle Ages were enlarged families created by voluntary compact: “De tout temps (observes Sismondi) les familles puissantes avaient été dans l’usage, à Gênes, d’augmenter encore leur puissance en adoptant d’autres familles moins riches, moins illustres, ou moins nombreuses,—auxquelles elles communiquoient leur nom et leurs armes, qu’elles prenoient ainsi l’engagement de protéger,—et qui en retour s’associoient à toutes leurs quérelles. Les maisons dans lesquelles on entroit ainsi par adoption, étoient nommées des alberghi (auberges), et il y avoit peu de maisons illustres qui ne se fussent ainsi récrutées a l’aide de quelque famille étrangère.” (Républiques Italiennes, t. xv, ch. 120, p. 366.)
Eichhorn (Deutsche Staats und Rechts-Geschichte, sect. 18, vol. i, p. 84, 5th edit.) remarks in regard to the ancient Germans, that the German “familiæ et propinquitates,” mentioned by Tacitus (Germ. c. 7), and the “gentibus cognationibusque hominum” of Cæsar (B. G. vi. 22), bore more analogy to the Roman gens than to relationship of blood or wedlock. According to the idea of some of the German tribes, even blood-relationship might be formally renounced and broken off, with all its connected rights and obligations, at the pleasure of the individual: he might declare himself ἐκποιητὸς, to use the Greek expression. See the Titul. 63 of the Salic law, as quoted by Eichhorn, l. c.
Professor Koutorga of St. Petersburg (in his Essai sur l’Organisation de la Tribu dans l’Antiquité, translated from Russian into French by M. Chopin, Paris, 1839) has traced out and illustrated the fundamental analogy between the social classification, in early times, of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Russians (see especially, pp. 47, 213). Respecting the early history of Attica, however, many of his positions are advanced upon very untrustworthy evidence (see p. 123, seq.).
[95] Pindar, Pyth. viii, 53; Isthm. vi, 92; Nem. vii, 103; Strabo, ix, p. 421; Stephan. Byz. v. Κῶς; Herodot. v, 44; vii, 134; ix, 37; Pausan. x, 1, 4; Kallimachus, Lavacr. Pallad. 33; Schol. Pindar. Pyth. ii. 27; Aristot. Pol. v, 8, 13: Ἀλευάδων τοὺς πρώτους, Plato, Menon. 1, which marks them as a numerous gens. See Buttmann, Dissert. on the Aleuadæ in the Mythologus, vol. ii, p. 246. Bacchiadæ at Corinth, ἐδίδοσαν καὶ ἤγοντο ἐξ ἀλλήλων (Herod. v, 92).
[96] Harpokration, v. Ἐτεοβουτάδαι, Βουτάδαι; Thucyd. viii, 53; Plutarch, Theseus, 12; Themistoklês, 1; Demosth. cont. Neær. p. 1365: Polemo ap. Schol. ad Soph. Œdip. Kol. 489; Plutarch, Vit. x, Orator. pp. 841-844. See the Dissertation of O. Müller, De Minervâ Poliade, c. 2.
[97] Demosth. cont. Neær. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische Staatsverfass, p. 277) thinks that every citizen, after the Kleisthenean revolution, was of necessity a member of some phratry, as well as of some deme: but the evidence which he produces is, in my judgment, insufficient. The ideas of the phratry and the tribe are often confounded together; thus the Ægeidæ of Sparta, whom Herodotus (iv, 149) calls a tribe, are by Aristotle called a phratry of Thebans (ap. Schol. ad Pindar. Isthm. vii, 18). Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 83, p. 17.
A great many of the demes seem to have derived their names from the shrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad Aristophan. Plutus, 586, Μυρρινοῦς, Ῥαμνοῦς, etc.).